Chimes
by Jarissa Paxton
Summary: Some of Infinity Inc's closest victims get along with one another fairly well. Some do not.  Brigid's Verse knows that everyone would get along perfectly as soon as they understand that she is ALWAYS RIGHT. Reviews and critiques appreciated!
1. Chimes

_Author's Note to Reader:_

_Thank you kindly for being my audience!_

_Background information is available on the original concepts included herein at The Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe, also known as the VirtueVerse, at ( www(DOT)virtueverse(DOT)net/wiki/Infinity_Inc ). None of that information is necessary to understand this story, however, if I've done my job right._

_This work contains references to physical abuse, deadly violence, involuntary medical experimentation, brainwashing, and the irredeemably villainous act of treating thinking beings as property. It also may contain a few very crude words._

_**If you are distressed in ****any**** way** by such concepts, I very much appreciate your interest, but I wish you to hit your "Back" button and go read something else. Real Life is far too short to include any unnecessary misery – something my villains utterly fail to grasp._

_On to the..._

_Author's Legalese Note:_

_The setting and many of the identifying features in this work (such as the Rogue Isles or Paragon City, and a business called Exarch in the latter location) are the property of NC Interactive, and are used without permission. No infringement of said property is intended or implied, and no profit may be made from this work by anybody except NC Interactive and/or Paragon Studios._

_Original concepts of the villainous corporation Infinity Incorporated, its owners, and their lease-a-minion program (especially all named characters on screen here or in a related story) are the inventions of City of Heroes players ("at" symbol)Jarissa, ("at" symbol)Tommy Raiden, ("at" symbol)Oliver Zanders, and ("at" symbol)Skyburner, who reserve use of said characters/organization to the players supporting that particular little fan community. Please do not use without first discussing it with one of us. Frankly, it's easier and more fun to join the _City of... _game and make a new character for oneself anyway._

_And it's free! Please visit ( na(DOT)cityofheroes(DOT)com/en ) to get started, and feel free to drop us an in-game note._

_Thanks for slogging through the legal bit with me. Enjoy!_

_- J_

* * *

><p>Opal scowled for the briefest moment before she caught herself. Hybrid Deltas should be serene and confident in most circumstances, as far as she was concerned; but more to the point, her face was art and she didn't want to start developing frown lines again.<p>

Still, she decided as she watched the smaller Hybrid Alpha explore the side room, it was worth a bit of scowling.

Ahead, Iceberia paced impatiently between industrial storage shelves as the office building finally joined itself to a proper warehouse. Ever since the mission where they'd found the deep freeze chamber, her tiger alternated between racing to clear a warehouse of all possible hidden targets and annoyance over the possibility of atypical combat areas. He growled under his breath every time he crossed the open space.

Iceberia was wonderful in combat, but not yet very much for scouting and reporting, which was why Opal confiscated a second Hybrid Alpha for this mission. Officially. Unofficially, she saw a peer's assigned Alpha sitting around in one of the communal Alpha cages with no particular task impending, and knew the Delta in question would be busy for several hours yet; if Opal could not get the Killing Dance to open up to her, perhaps she could learn about him by spending some time with his frequent companion.

And now the Alpha was making a painstakingly thorough search of a sunken box of a room, which would be fine and proper, except that Opal suspected the little furball was no longer searching for hidden data drives so much as studying the design of the room itself, and the placement of many dozen handmade bells or wind chimes or something so that every brush of the equipment would result in tinkling music.

For one telling piece of evidence: the way the leopard moved had changed. She no longer crept or stalked. Her body language had shed most of its inherent mistrustful enmity. Something almost like grace filled the gap, as the scrawny Alpha twisted through narrow gaps between one weight lifting bench and another sparring target, delighted when she managed without setting one of the dangling cascades to swaying, equally as delighted when she had to reach back with claws or tail to delicately halt the chimes again.

_She __is __**dancing**_, Opal concluded sourly. _Like__ him__._ Again she schooled herself to not frown.

At last, a little breathless, the leopard extracted herself from the exercise chamber and scurried up the steps. A shadow of the mimicked grace remained in her last few steps as the Alpha sank to a humble crouch at Opal's feet.

"Please, Verse," the Alpha began in that guttural voice, "save that room. No break. You make gift to Dance."

_What__?_

That was so utterly not what Opal expected to hear, she leaned over to grasp the leopard's ear between two sharp fingers and tilt her head upward. "What? Fehral, explain yourself."

"Please," she repeated - if anything, more humbly, more obviously intending to beg. "Client no order destroy all place. Only hunt target, hunt machine pieces with blink lights and picture of two axe. Verse can do as she wish to all rest. Or not do. Please. You save that room. You bring the Killing Dance to room, make gift. Cost you nothing. You just say you find, you see is for dancing, you not have use, you think maybe he enjoy."

Opal studied the leopard's upturned face for several minutes. She looked over at the room, regarding it silently. Finally she returned her attention to her borrowed minion. "Fehral. If I do this, do you say the Killing Dance will finally show me courtesy?"

A troubled expression ghosted across Fehral's brown eyes. "No get."

Opal pinched that ear tighter, impatiently. "If I give him this place, will he be nice to me? Will he want to talk with me?"

Fehral winced as blood started to trickle down the long curve of her ears, but forced herself to not pull away. "Fehral not know. Dance no much _talk_."

"He talks with Grigaere," Opal grumbled.

"That is … talk _art_," the leopard tried to explain. "Music. Dancing. Joy. You get? Is same and not same. Is not like, like _paint_. No talk Ceylon. No talk Kinba Kushi. You not make music. You Brigid's Verse," she stumbled over the name. "You art no help him _dance_."

"My art is poetry," Opal snapped as she tossed the leopard to one side. She stalked forward a few steps to gaze again at the exercise room and all of its precisely-arranged clumps of carved things.

Though she did not look to either side, she was aware of Iceberia lurking to her left, in the shadows of the laden shelves, hoping for any command to attack. To her right, huddled against the wall, Fehral picked herself barely upright again and scrubbed the drying blood away with the back of one paw. The leopard kept herself otherwise still, not quite abased, but certainly as meek as Opal could recall having ever seen.

_She __must __really __want __this_, Opal estimated grimly. _Well__, __then__. __What__ will __she __pay__?_

"You say it will cost me nothing," she told the leopard at last, turning to put her back to the exercise room, "but that is not true. It will cost me time, and effort, and may not get me anything at all in return. Our personal time is precious to us, little Alpha. I want something from you, if I am to do this. Something that even your Killing Dance has not had."

Fehral stared at her warily, bewildered. "Fehral has nothing," she pointed out softly. "Fehral is Alpha. No allow equipment. Verse want Fehral blanket?"

"No. Giving me your blanket is not at all the same as what you ask of me."

The leopard glanced across the intersection at the tiger for a moment. "Fehral has nothing."

"Fehral has," Opal corrected purringly, "her flaws."

Now both of the Alphas were staring at her. Opal reveled in their concentrated focus for a moment. "Everyone at the Isles facility hears talk of the Alpha named Fehral, sooner or later, if only because the employees complain so bitterly of your mood swings. You are obedient at some moments, sullen and contrary at others, belligerent or frantic without any cause they can deduce. You are one of the oldest products of the Hybrid Alpha project line, and they say that your design has flaws they may never eradicate. You are only assigned to the Killing Dance because it was that or terminate your project." Opal leaned forward a bit, lowering her voice, as if imparting a juicy secret instead of common knowledge. "And I hear that your designers are already dead, their facility dismantled: you are the only part of your project that remains to be destroyed."

All three were silent for so long that Fehral finally realized a response was expected. "Yes," she whispered, shuddering. "Dance is to tame Fehral. Or end project. Cannot _fix_."

"Ahh," Opal crowed, "so you **do** understand the nature of your doom. I wondered. You still manage to earn yourself quite a bit of punishment."

Fehral thought about that for several seconds. "Observer say is better than before," she admitted reluctantly. "Say maybe Killing Dance only need more time. Say Fehral always be some bad." Her ears twitched the problem away. "Is what Verse want? Hear Fehral is broken?"

"Oh, leopard Alpha, that isn't even the beginning of what I want." Opal pointed back at the exercise room behind her, posing dramatically. "You want me to give this to your Delta, who holds your death in his hands. Fine. I can certainly understand the value in that. If he fails to retrain you, the lack will be seen in you, not in him. So this is really for your benefit, I think. I want you, for the rest of this day, to be _my_ Alpha. To be what an Alpha is _meant_ to be."

Again, barely breathing this time, Fehral stared at Opal in bewilderment. "No get."

Opal was not about to let a little refusal to comprehend get in her way. "You do not always do as even the Killing Dance bids you," she pointed out. "You have your flaws. You withhold your assistance in combat. You refuse when he orders you to the training wing, until he has to physically crowd or drag you." Automatically, she gave the command word its perfect pitch and inflection: "You wander away from your assigned post when told '_here_'. I will grant, you _scout_ and _report_ and _kill_ well enough … most of the time. Today, this mission and all the way back to the base and even then until I release you, Fehral, you will suffer whatever lash you must direct in your own mind in order to perfectly comply with any command I give."

Fehral clung to the wall with both hands, claws extended, as if hiding against a mother's skirts. She trembled for several minutes, wide-eyed.

"This is something you do not give the Killing Dance," Opal explained softly. "Your willful, utter cooperation. It will cost you dearly. It will exhaust you. It will weaken you, as you fight yourself nearly to destruction. I do not care about that. What I want, what _I_ want, is to force your absolute limits. And you will do it to _yourself_. Because I think you _can_ be a good Alpha, obedient and meek and terribly dangerous, if only you have reason enough to overcome the flaws in your design."

At last, the shaking leopard stuttered back into words. "Vvv'rrs no get! Fehral no can. Try! Many year try! Delta before Dance try. Beat me every time fail. Try so much. Not Fehral fault! Mind howl and body move and Fehral bad! Please, Verse, _no_ want this. No can give."

"You do not," Opal gently said, "tell me 'no'. I am Brigid's Verse. I am a **Delta**!"

Pressing tighter against the wall, Fehral looked away for several breaths. Finally she got her quaking under some control. "Okay, look. No can give all that. Give some. Still hurt. Want Fehral help in fight, is stupid. Fehral tiny. Get in tiger's way. Just piss off tiger. You no care Fehral go training because is at base. You no remember Omegas and you never get why Fehral hate. Dance no get either and he no care. You want make Fehral be servant. Some things Fehral _no can_, that part of mind is _broken_. Some things Fehral can do but very hard, and maybe break in middle. Dance not yet ask any of that, ever. Verse want that?"

Opal thought about it, startled. She hadn't expected the Alpha to come back with a counter-offer. "I might. We expect resistance to some commands, from even the most docile Alpha. Have you been placed in restraints before?"

Even Iceberia growled at the hint of the _chains_ command. Fehral shot him an annoyed glance. "Hybrid Omega do. Delta before Killing Dance try. Stupid."

"No, I did not think so." Opal fell silent, thinking about the verbal command list.

Slowly, unwillingly, the leopard offered, "Dance never yet say _obey_."

Opal jerked upright, astounded. "Never? Why, that's the most obvious start to the puzzle of you!"

Fehral's ears and whiskers twitched in negation. "Never. Owner tell Fehral '_obey_ the Killing Dance'. Say 'always'. Walk away. Fehral not even know if Dance know how say."

Opal laughed happily. "Of course he knows how to say it, any Delta who is taught to give commands at all knows how to say it, there must be something in your record about that command and the flaws in your programming and he thinks that is the mistake everyone else has made with you all this time."

A shrug travelled from Fehral's hunched shoulders down the curve of her spine until it shivered at the end of her tail. "Dunno."

"Marvelous. That's fine. What other command has he skipped?"

Fehral looked around at the floor, uncomfortable. "Umm. No _submit_. No need. Dance fight more'n Fehral. He say _eat_ sometimes. He always have protein shake but is not for Alpha. No use _return_." She searched her memory for a moment. "No _follow_. No reason. Never tell Fehral _hide_ or Ssssss-" The Alpha broke off, but the command she meant was obviously and understandably the terrifying first routine taught all Hybrids of any series, to freeze in place and make no sound.

"Well," Opal decided; "useless and pointless and not relevant to today, mostly. Very well. You will go _scout_ the next area, find a valid target and come bring my Iceberia to it. You will stay out of all combat unless Iceberia invites you. _Hide_ and _assist_ Iceberia. Understand?"

"Yes, Verse."

"Go on, then."

Opal turned back to gaze upon the exercise room, and calculate how long into the afternoon she should wait before she proved that the _obey_ command worked perfectly as designed if the Alpha was surprised with it. "Good tiger," she murmured under her breath, "you'll do very nicely."


	2. Jangling

Fehral slid out of the shadows on the third shelf from the top and studied the pale-furred tiger on the ground. He looked far more satisfied, somehow, than he had been earlier that day. Occasionally his gaze shot back toward the bright intersection where Brigid's Verse still posed, as if checking for new instructions; but Iceberia's ears cupped forward and his eyelids drooped. He felt good about life.

In Fehral's years of experience, a self-satisfied thug was a problem waiting to happen.

Fehral huffed in silent annoyance, but drooped her tail down the side of the shelving unit anyway, and let it sway until his head turned to follow the motion.

_Found_, she informed him in the short motions of the gesture code, as if picking up a needle from the air in front of her. _Yours_.

Iceberia lazily rose to his considerable height, stretched, yawned, and rubbed his back. _Slow_, he complained.

"Then keep up," she suggested aloud. Fehral turned on the spot, flicking her tail.

She peeked around her left shoulder at him once, in the dull illumination of an emergency sign, careful to keep a not-quite-innocent expression in her body language. Iceberia was a little too busy with his efforts to move quickly and quietly, and not lose track of her. He barely had time to register annoyance at Fehral's display before she turned sharply leftward around a corner. When Iceberia reached that spot, she had already disappeared up an extended flight of stairs.

The tiger didn't manage to catch up until he touched the third landing, where Fehral hunched patiently near an iron railing. She arched her whiskers toward the center of the large chamber below them. _Enemy. Six. Target. No gun._

Iceberia edged forward until he could just barely see the tops of six heads. One, hairless, had swirling tattoos that arched up over the back of his head. That would be the target. Iceberia grinned to himself in anticipation.

_Help?_

The tiger sneered down at Fehral's offer. He bounded around the catwalk, leaped to a stack of crates, and plucked icy daggers out of what had moments ago been empty air. The first enemy to turn toward Iceberia's roar took both daggers in his eyes; he went down screaming.

* * *

><p>Fehral leaned on the railing, frustrated and bored. <em>Stupid tiger spends too much time showing off,<em> she mused irritably. He had defeated three of the target's guards so far, but the remaining two drove him slowly back while the target fled toward safety.

"You aren't chasing him," Brigid's Verse noted heatedly from the stairwell.

Startled, Fehral twisted to bring the red-haired woman into view. "Tiger no call," she pointed out virtuously. "Delta say Fehral wait."

"That's true," the higher-ranked minion conceded. Overlooking the battlefield, Brigid's Verse flung out her right hand imperiously. A cylinder of fire ignited in the air around the target, who crashed into its perimeter before he could catch himself. He started screaming, which made his guards flinch away from pummelling the tiger-man long enough that Verse's second gesture summoned cages with fire bars around each of them. Chuckling, Iceberia crafted more ice daggers out of the air near his hands so he could finish off his prey.

"Good leopard," Opal condescendingly praised. "Go find that missing data drive."

Burying a hiss of annoyance, Fehral dropped her hands - her upper paws - to the metal mesh of the catwalk. She scurried off to explore the last unknown shadows of the warehouse.

Much to her surprise, Iceberia caught up again before the screaming ceased.

"You no fight?"

"Nyet," the tiger growled. "Delta."

Fehral listened for a heartbeat to the crackling noises that echoed off the cement walls. "S'pose. You already win."

Iceberia rumbled what might be agreement. Fehral resumed her exploration cautiously. At a door, she barred Iceberia's path briefly with her tail while she straightened up to manipulate the latch.

For several seconds, Fehral held the door only an inch open while she concentrated. Nothing larger than a rat, a "real" rat instead of a human-creature hybrid, moved; the escaping wisp of stuffy air smelled like cotton, lemon oil, and dust. When she pulled the door far enough open to enter, Iceberia shouldered his way through close on her heels.

The small room contained shrinkwrapped pallets of cloth bolts, boxes with pictures of various lace designs, and industrial-sized spools of thread in many bright colors. A dressmaker's dummy stood near the center of the room, bristling with straight pins.

Iceberia stopped, however, to poke the dead body sprawled two feet beyond the door. He looked up at Fehral accusingly.

"Fehral not do," she declared firmly. "You saw."

He jostled the corpse a few more times while Fehral shoved her way between various boxes, searching for a data drive not much larger than a folded pair of boot socks. The next time she was looking in his direction, Iceberia demanded, "You Delta not," and he finished with only the hand-gesture part of the command: _obey_.

Fehral stared at him quizzically. A few minutes' thought gave her a reasonable guess as to his intended question. "Really. Not pretend. Dance not say that order." At the expression of sheer disbelief he gave, she expanded, "He not need. He is **Killing Dance**. You see Dance fight, you see Dance _punish_, silly tiger, you get."

By degrees, the disbelief faded in his eyes. "See. Da."

"Hah. Yes. Fehral no want stupid trouble." Dusting off her hands, she looked around the room with some annoyance. "Stupid blink light thing not here. Or is hid. Have to take all apart."

Iceberia curled his lip at the notion. His attention returned to the corpse once more. _Stupid cat kill,_ he gestured in annoyance. _Delta punish you_.

Fehral bristled at the accusation. "Listen, stupid! Fehral not do. Look. You see holes?" Crouching by the dead man, she fanned her fingers wide to touch the bottom edge of each hole at once. "You see Fehral? Very far. Claws not right. Not how Fehral kill. Look." With exaggerated stalking motions she crept over to the dressmaker's dummy, settled in a deep stance, then lunged upward suddenly to drive her claws up under the imaginary victim's ribcage. As she withdrew her hand again, Fehral rose to a more comfortable nearly-upright posture. "Holes. Close but not touch. Claws go up. Not away. See?"

The tiger scowled at the marks on the dummy, and on the body. He even deigned to lay one of his short fingers in the space between punctures on the latter, which only proved her point further. While Fehral picked stuffing out of her claws, Iceberia grunted his disappointment.

"Fehral been good," she apprised the scowling tiger. As an afterthought, she turned to rake her claws sideways through the dummy, obscuring the evidence for any investigator who might come along later.

A hard, rectangular object slid out of the dummy's central mass, slapping to the floor with a resounding clunk. Fehral blinked at it for a moment before she started to laugh.

_Found_, she told the air as she crouched to pick the data drive up. "We go give to Verse."

Iceberia snatched the drive from her hands. "MY Delta," he snarled.

"No want you stupid Delta!" Fehral snarled back. "Fine. _You_ give."

* * *

><p>Fehral even let Iceberia lead the way back to the previous battlefield, figuring it wasn't worth the trouble to deflate his smug strut. The captured enemies were nothing but char, the flames gone and the scene still damp from the emergency sprinkler. Iceberia prowled directly up to Brigid's Verse. Tapping one claw on the logo of crossed hatchets, he shoved the drive into the redhead's hands.<p>

"_Good_ tiger," Verse cooed. "Extra supper for you. Any trouble?"

"Nyet," Iceberia started to say, when the sharp report of a small explosion rang out. Running men appeared at the smoking ruin of a far wall, clothed in brightly-colored silk and obscured by hoods. The leading man swerved for Brigid's Verse, gesturing at the drive she still grasped; after a few steps, half those behind him followed, shouting. Iceberia lunged a few steps forward, putting space between himself and Verse, creating ice daggers and sharp shards with all of his strength. The leopard Alpha vibrated in her skin for a moment, clearly fighting some urge, before she turned to scramble into the maze of crates stacked on and near the shelves.

"Fehral!" Verse's voice cracked like a whip, causing the small leopard-woman to flinch as if ducking a blow. "_Obey_ Iceberia!"

The tiger, astonished to hear his name, badly missed his next throw. He started to laugh, despite his danger: a full-bodied, husky sound like a rhythmic series of roars.

On Fehral, meanwhile, the effect of the command could have been mistaken for the crash of an energy wave battering her to the ground. She stumbled, fell, forced herself shakingly upright, only to have her joints give out again. The leopard tossed her head as if to knock away an oppressive blanket.

The most appalling howl ripped its way out of Fehral's throat. When she rose again, seething, she glared at Brigid's Verse for a full ten seconds before her focus turned toward the embattled tiger.

He was far too occupied to notice, by then. Verse realized the flaw in her entire plan might just be that her Alpha could barely stitch together a sentence when he was at leisure; he would not get the chance to take any advantage of her plotting until long after the danger had passed. Tucking the drive inadequately under one arm, she began setting fire cages around as many enemies as she could see.

"Fehral," a guttural voice hissed from a spot just inches behind Opal's neck, "obeys _the Killing Dance_. Because _Owner command_. Stupid _Verse_ not tame me!"

She had to drop the data drive to do it, but Brigid's Verse twisted without hesitation to grab the Alpha balanced on a shipping carton behind her. Using all of her momentum, she threw the leopard bodily into the middle of Iceberia's fight.

"If you want my cooperation, you will do as I bid!"

The crush of bodies and the capering bars of flame hid Fehral from Opal's view as she retrieved the data drive. She heard Iceberia growl threateningly, which might have been directed at his attackers or the fire itself as easily as his diminutive peer. The fire suppression system creaked back to life, adding more chaos everywhere. Opal lost track even of the starkly black-on-white gleam from her tiger's fur. Finally nervous, she retreated to a more defensible spot under the catwalk around the room.

After several long minutes, Iceberia lumbered out of the smoke, followed by the ragged smudge of Fehral's exhausted form. Neither Alpha Hybrid would look at the other, as if renewed hostilities could only be avoided by mutual failure to acknowledge one another's presence, but Iceberia knew Opal would reward him if he reported any disobedience on the other's part. He remained disgruntledly taciturn under her questioning glance.

"Enemy gone," Fehral muttered sullenly. Her voice was almost too rough to make out.

Opal sighed. "Fine. Good work. Let us have no more disturbance between here and the base."


	3. Discordant

_Author's Note to Reader:_

_This chapter in particular earns the entire four-chapter set an updraft to **Mature Audiences Only** due to multiple issues:_

_* Strong sexual content including non-consensual activities_

_* Participants in the above may have not been of legal age in some areas, though they are within a few months of each other's exact age_

_* Not-quite-homicidal violence later ensues_

* * *

><p>3: Discordant<p>

"The contract work this afternoon was in this building," Opal confided to the exquisitely muscular figure walking at her right. "We should have a day or two before a new claimant makes access difficult."

He was perfectly, precisely her height. If she took off her heels, they would have the exact height difference of every romance novel cover ever. Opal felt deliciously aware of every move the man next to her made.

He said nothing. He did not look in her direction. They might as well be strangers passing through the corridor of the training wing.

_Fehral better have been right_, Opal thought darkly. _I will peel her hide off and feed it to her, if the Killing Dance does not warm to me._

Ahead, her white tiger Alpha Hybrid paced carefully along the dimly-lit office hall. Iceberia remembered the layout of the joined buildings, but was prudently alert for opportunists. The enemy made such an inviting large hole in the warehouse portion of the complex.

Opal thought about the poetry in contrasts. Their makers returned to her an elegantly feminine form, strong but not bulky, solid and yet streaming fans of gossamer firelight behind her like wings. Even the curving ridges of scars scattered around the edges of her face and elsewhere were decorous, graceful, lovely. She wore carved armor from jawline to toe, bright brassy gold hugging her skin, gloriously crimson accent lines pasted thickly where it best accentuated her form. Her assigned Alpha, Iceberia, had been a great hulk of a man before his genetic and surgical transformation into a black-and-white tiger. He, too, wore armor on his torso and upper limbs, leaving tail and lower arms and legs free to ripple and sway and strike. He could not have made a more pleasing contrast to his Delta even before the makers granted him the ability to suck the heat out of the air around him.

And yet, not more than six months before they made Opal into Brigid's Verse...

Opal stole another concealed glance at the figure who glided effortlessly along. Supple, charcoal-black leather poured over every dimple and curve on a strong dancer's build. Stitch-lines bulged out where segments of the armor connected across the stress points: only after long, covert study had she noticed that the stitching itself formed a subtle pattern. Buckles fastened the armor tightly at its wearer's neck, and more buckles attached to straps just below his deltoid muscles, at his elbows, between the tops of his boots and the bottoms of his knees.

_They must have to oil the man to get that on him, and off again_, Opal mused.

Cloth flowed up his neck to cover his hair and the lower half of his face. Shadowy makeup obscured most of his skin between that cloth mask and an armored skullcap. She knew he was actually pale only because she was close enough to see the point where makeup blended into the line of the cloth.

For the same reason, she could spot the two sword sheaths buckled to his back, if she cared to hesitate a step: Opal was close enough to pick up on tiny nuances, and she knew they had to be there.

Just like she knew he would not let her move behind him.

_We would make such a lovely simile_, Opal sighed to herself, _with the vivid red of my hair draped across his chest as those long, lean fingers trail the crisscrossing lines above my waist._

She suspected that his tastes ran instead to equally masculine creations. A woman sensed when her form was appreciated on first encounter, and this one barely deigned to look at her. She was pretty sure he was not having an affair with the Fiddler, either, which left the remaining options fairly scarce.

Opal did not mind being spurned. She minded very much being **ignored**.

Iceberia stopped to peer rightward for a few heartbeats. When satisfied that no chance of combat loomed, he wandered a few steps further into the distance before settling against the wall.

"Good, it has not been disturbed," Opal deduced. She quickened her stride to cover the last yard before the side room became visible. "I found this during the search for our kill target today. He no longer needs it. It does not serve my art, yet it seems a shame to let such a careful arrangement go to one who will not appreciate such things." Realizing she sounded nervous, Opal forced herself to take a quick breath. She dropped the pitch of her voice half an octave. Gesturing dramatically, she announced, "I give it to you, Killing Dance. I hope you find pleasure in it."

The older Delta studied her shrewdly for a long, silent moment, his eyes narrowed. Slowly his head swung to look at the sunken exercise chamber. His feet moved of their own volition as he moved to a clearer vantage point. Another brief hesitation, and then Killing Dance flowed down the eight steps, past twin target dummies, into the center of the room. His head tilted briefly to watch the targets' chimes ripple in his wake. Then his careful scan of the room's contents, for which he rotated in place on the center mat, stopped for a second on each subsequent chime.

Opal estimated there had to be around fifty of them hanging: from weight-lifting machines, a wide treadmill, each barbell or dumbbell on its respective rack, suspended gymnastic rings for pull-ups, a set of parallel bars, and various targets arranged for punches or kicks all about the room. Some even dangled at various heights from the ceiling, no doubt to accommodate an athlete who practiced flips or high jumps.

The Killing Dance halted when he had finished his visual search. He stood nearly motionless for a long time, with his back to the intersection, flexing muscles in synchronized sequence: fingers, then palms, then his forearms, then his lats; on the third repetition to reach his shoulders, the pattern continued down his back. Opal thought he might not even be aware that he was doing it.

_Is he imagining uses of the room already?_ she wondered.

Without warning, too fast to see, the Killing Dance drew both of his swords and exploded into a storm of destruction.

* * *

><p>He met Calliope in history class.<p>

She didn't know he was alive.

It wasn't so much of a problem until the third year of high school, when one of the more dictatorial teachers assigned seating rather than let his students sit in cliques and clusters. She sat in front of him, close enough to touch, far enough away to be on the most distant ends of the Earth.

Her hair sometimes touched the top edges of his notebook. He was always very careful to make sure its ends did not get caught in the spiral binding.

But she was a cheerleader, dating the quarterback of the football team, and he was only a dance nerd.

He was in the school's dance studio practicing one of his sets for the winter competition when the air changed. It made him bend his left knee at half a degree too sharp an angle, which threw the rest of his timing off. Before he could recover, Calliope - dressed in high-cut biking shorts and a sports bra - flicked open the memory chip bay on his mp3 player. She dropped her chip into place, tapped it shut with one crimson-polished fingernail, and bumped the control screen a few times.

His music abruptly cut off, which infuriated him. He was just nerving himself up to speak coldly to her, politely of course as Momma insisted he always be a gentleman, when Calliope's selection burst into life.

He knew Boléro by its first three notes.

He had never seen a woman move like music personified.

Calliope swayed up to him gradually, hips rolling in time to the rhythm of the flute's melody, arms out and fluttering with the snare drum's beat. She stood close enough that he could smell the rain-scented perfume in her vivid fire-red hair, feel her breath caress his lips. He stood frozen, helpless, hypnotized as she met his black eyes ... flicked her long lashes down briefly to glance at his lips ... looked back at him, into him, as she whispered softly, "Do you hear it?"

Her body slid, rippled, rocked to the bassoon line, all barely an inch or two from him. He could feel the heat of her arms as they drifted past his shoulders. One hand came back to trail a curving loop across the tight Lycra of his tank top, sharp edge that scratched just hard enough to not tickle. "I hear it. I hear the music. Let's dance."

She turned to press her back against his chest, still gyrating, and he found that he was moving perfectly with her. Calliope turned again to face him when the second flute joined the snare drum, and the second clarinet took up the melody.

They danced.

He had never felt anything like this. He suddenly understood, instinctively, the connection between dancers that had always been missing between himself and his partner in every prior duet. They were not mirrors, they were complements: puzzle pieces that fit together naturally, positive to negative, halves of a whole even when the music spiralled them apart.

On the eleventh renewal of the melody, Calliope's lips found his. Ropes of intense white light shot through his nerves, exactly synchronized to the trombone. She rocked harder against him, the dance never hesitating, her tongue caressing the tip of his while he slid to the right in the eternal slow rise and whirl of the glissandi.

_This, everything we feel, _this _must be love!_ he realized in a fierce epiphany. It stole his breath, his reason, the last faint drop of his caution.

By the fourteenth renewal, he vaguely noticed that quite a bit of their clothing scattered around them on the floor; before the trumpet and the second horn traded places on the snare rhythm in the fifteenth, she pressed him greedily to the floor.

"Wait," he gasped as the cold hardwood floor shocked the burning nerves in his spine. "Calliope - I love you, of course I love you, but this is too rough, this is not how it should be between us, please!"

Her hands seemed to be everywhere and he was powerless to resist. "Come on, lover," she cooed along with the insistent orchestra. "Would you rather feel a little pain, or nothing at all?"

They lay together afterward, limbs entwined, as one of Ravel's piano concertos played softly. "I have a gift for you," Calliope said languidly. "Stay right there." She wiggled away toward her outflung shorts for a moment, leaving him oddly cold until his breathtakingly expressive beloved crawled back to his side. "You love my hair," she said, "I've caught you staring at it so many times. I made you a trinket to think of me by."

The thin loop she held up smelled of her perfume, glowed like firelight. As he peered more closely, he saw that it was made of her hair, braided and rebraided and knotted into an unending pattern. "Give me your hand," she ordered. He had to twist his fingers carefully so no strand would break as she dragged the bracelet past the heel of his palm, but then he stared in delight at his gift: her hair, surrounding him, so bright and solid and real against his pale skin.

"Thank you, it's perfect," he said softly.

Calliope giggled. "You weren't so bad yourself. Come on, we should get dressed." She sprang to her feet again.

He had his soft dance slippers in place, his Lycra tights, and was just reaching out to offer Calliope her tiny shirt - his mind shied away from "sports bra" suddenly, mustn't picture his beloved running around in only her undergarments - when the studio door banged open. A huge figure paused on the threshold long enough to pose for absent admirers.

The quarterback stormed into the room, leading an absolute chorus of hangers-on from the popular clique, and everything went straight to hell.

He stood in stunned silence, shocked, disbelieving, betrayed, as Calliope shrilly laid the fault for their dalliance at his feet. _Rape_, she actually said; _nerd-boy forced me_, and the words had no meaning he could comprehend. The quarterback loomed over her and snarled, something about her standard seduction mix as he pointed at the nearest part of the sound system.

Apparently they all wanted to believe whatever craziness the cheerleader provided. Disgusted mutters turned into outraged snarls. He halfheartedly started to explain, though deep down he knew they would not listen.

But when the quarterback charged at him, he danced nimbly aside. _Let the idiot bounce off the wall a few times, that should tire him out, and then Calliope will admit the truth!_

She never did, at least not before witnesses.

When the quarterback could not get a solid blow after several tries, the passel of fellow football players stepped in to surround him. Then the fight started to go badly. He had never fought before, never really thought about violence beyond its portrayal in dance; the moves translated well, but the enemies were stronger and more numerous and long in the habit of dealing out pain.

He might still have done all right for himself. Two of the enemy sprawled on the dance floor, trapped by their overconfidence, trapped by his superior knowledge of weak points in joints or nerve clusters.

Then he heard Calliope, his redheaded goddess, tell her clustered cheerleaders-in-waiting that he had not been enough to make her nerves sing, how could he be, he was only a dance nerd after all. They laughed.

It was the laughter that killed him.

Oh, the fists of his attackers were what put out the lights, turned his awareness into a sea of unending hurt, broke his limbs and beat him until his mind retreated far into inky blackness; but it was the laughter, the cruel laughter, her abjuration of their love as a figment of his imagination that took the will to fight out of him in the first place.

She would pay for that.

* * *

><p>Opal had not actually been aware that swords could cut through a metal frame like this.<p>

Desperate to escape the flying bits of shrapnel, she tossed a cylinder of flame into the space immediately in front of her. It warped the air enough to curve the paths of larger pieces. Unfortunately, the smallest slivers flew straight and swift, and gained dangerous white-hot glows besides.

Opal waved her left hand at Iceberia, beckoning him to her rescue. He picked the damnedest times, some days, to stare at her blankly. He did not move; if she turned to face him, the rain of debris all too likely would hit some vital spot.

_No way he'll hear my orders over that - that - __**tornado**_ _- in there!_

In the exercise room, the Killing Dance moved like a thing possessed. His swords shredded every chime, every target, every item of the room's inventory. He kicked and struck with his elbows and slammed with his shoulders. Everything gave way. Everything came apart. He had no care for where the pieces landed, only that it be broken past recognition.

The Killing Dance was not attacking Brigid's Verse. She knew that as surely as she knew her danger increased if she moved from that spot. Better not to draw his attention.

Iceberia retreated another step toward the relative safety of the northern corridor. He watched the spray rattling against the wall behind Opal, wide-eyed.

As suddenly as violence had begun, it ended. The man in black stood in the center of the room once more, breathing heavily. He surveyed his work with an air of cold dissatisfaction.

Deliberately, he turned to face Opal, who dismissed her fire cylinder just before he would see it.

"**Never**," he commanded darkly, "give me **anything** again!"

Sheathing his swords, he mounted the eight steps out of the wreckage. The Killing Dance walked past her, turned left, and vanished into the shadows of the office building immediately - noiselessly, effortlessly, leaving only rage in his wake.

Opal stared after him for a long time.

When Iceberia found it safe to pad back into the intersection, Opal turned one last time to gaze at the exercise room.

_Gift, my ass,_ she thought. Fury rose steadily through her, like mounting flames. "I am going to find that little leopard," she told her tiger, "and when I get her alone, I am going to make her scream until her voice bleeds! A gift? This was a trap! This was all a trick to make him hate me! Did you see the fury in him? I could have been _killed_!"


	4. Clamor

Chimes 4: Clamor

On the fourth day of subtle loitering through the common areas, Opal finished her allotment of practice aerobics ten minutes ahead of schedule. She forced herself not to hurry as she cleaned up. When she strolled into the Hybrid Delta main intersection, the wall-sized touchscreen finally showed the information she needed: Hybrid Delta 104-A had the afternoon and evening blocked off for "advertising".

Translation: the Killing Dance should be out of the base already, on the streets of the islands, practicing his art where potential clients might see. He could not have departed more than half an hour ago, as Opal heard his music in the cell he shared with Grigaere before she went to practice and it was one of the pieces he always played through to its conclusion, not quite two hours long.

The leopard Alpha would be on her way back to her assigned cage, having just eaten.

Opal lengthened her stride slightly. She must encounter the Alpha in the corridors. As she passed the edge of the screen, she hastily tapped out the series of codes to reserve the smallest training room for her impending use. No one liked performing in that room - four mysterious large buzzing machines were just past its wall, making concentration and communication difficult. There was hardly any room to maneuver, no place viable to hide, and shrieks of agony tended not to carry well. Even the observers tended to leave the microphones off.

Her timing was almost perfect: Fehral crept along near the south side of the main corridor, humming off-key under her breath, wary but not remarkably so. She absent-mindedly crowded an inch or two further to the side when she noticed the redhead approaching.

"There you are," Opal said reprovingly. "Fehral, come with me."

The leopard halted in place, blinking. "Why?"

Opal displayed impatience. "Because I am a Delta, and I tell you to. I have borrowed you for scout work."

Fehral stared. "Dance say?"

"Would I waste my time with you if there were any doubt?" Opal retorted.

Still the leopard stared, and her expression grew more suspicious. "No."

"Of course I would not! So come along."

"Fehral not," the Alpha said mulishly. "Fehral ask Dance first. _He_ say, Fehral do."

_Of all the..._ Opal scowled, and the ghostly firelight streaming behind her grew noticeably brighter. "Little Alpha, despite what you may pretend, you are still required to do as a Delta bids you! You will _obey_ Brigid's Verse. Right this instant!"

Using that command may have been a strategic mistake: rather than convulse under its hypnotic lash, Fehral rested her spine against the wall long enough to fling a singularly crude suggestion Opal's way in the gesture code. At the same time, she howled "**NO!**" at a particularly healthy volume. Fehral turned and bounded away, further into the base, perhaps looking for a Corporation employee to accost.

_Dammit!_ Opal thought, and raced after the scrawny cat. She could smooth things over if she could get close enough to halt the fleeing Alpha's progress with a fire ring, even under witness inquiry.

Opal sailed around the sharp corner of the medical intersection and went blind, deaf, unable to breathe. For the second time in memory, Fehral belted Brigid's Verse full in the head with half the contents of a fire extinguisher - and then, despite Opal's frantic efforts to clear her eyes, Fehral belted her redheaded opponent far more literally with the hard metal tank, making Opal skid on the foam as she tried to keep her balance. One foot started to go out from under her. The tank slapped her hard across her stomach; Opal went down hard, flat on her back, the wind knocked completely out of her and the world reduced to disgusting white fluff-bubbles jiggling every time she blinked.

A moment of darkness: Fehral leaped over her, racing back the way Opal had come.

By the time Opal caught up enough to see the black-haired cat, the latter was racing through the security checkpoint in the base lobby, already rasping into the microphone of her clipped-on comms radio: "Dance? Dance!"

The more senior Security employee stationed by the door called after the departing Alpha, "Those things are jammed until you get outside, kitty-cat."

_Jerk,_ she flicked indignantly, and reached up to the electronic panel on the door to mash her paw flat on the sensor. "Go _out_," Fehral rumbled. "Find Killing Dance!"

A green light blinked confirmation - Fehral had permission to depart according to the computerized schedule, probably on the presumption that she would be joining her assigned Delta - and the lock released.

Opal came to a halt, barely winded, five steps too late: the door hung wide open, Fehral three paces beyond the emergency entanglement field. "I need to go collect that Alpha," she informed the Security trio quite reasonably. "She left a task unfinished!"

Hopefully the unenhanced ears of the employees could not pick out the meaning of simultaneously spoken words, blown in by the wind. One, cool and silken as leather, faintly calling, "I have something for you, Tiny Dancer;" the other, guttural and furious, demanding, "You loan me to Verse?"

One of the junior employees glanced down at his desk screen briefly. "You are not authorized to exit today, Brigid's Verse." All three men stared at her dispassionately.

As the door swung shut, Opal heard the remote male voice react in rising hostility: "...No! DO I NEED TO CUT HER?"

_Just ... great._ Fuming, Opal turned back toward the main hall. _Plan C it is._

* * *

><p>Fehral lost herself in the visceral sensation of hunting live prey. Most of her chosen targets never knew of their danger at all: she spotted them, studied their movements, stalked them across the greystone streets of the neighborhood, touched no more than a wisp of hair or the hem of a garment, slunk away again undetected. She had no <em>need<em> to kill. Most of the prey could not help being prey.

Maybe it was not much use for advertising her services as a leased minion through the Corporation. No one saw her, no one knew she was there, no one cared. Certainly no one with money and need of an assassin would be impressed.

Fehral did not care either. She was a monster by design; her appearance was advertisement enough. She did not think the Corporation had any good use for more money, more esteem, more connections. _More blood soaking its carpets,_ she thought darkly, and turned from the broad street to infiltrate an alley.

Anyway, this harm-free sort of hunting was fun, and good practice. It would be more fun if she could teach her "close working companion" how to do something like it. Maybe they could go play tag in the trees of Fortune's Wheel later, though she'd have to steer him away from the carnival grounds every so often.

If only the Killing Dance would show up!

Fehral glanced through a barred window, impatient, as she left the alley for a more interesting plaza. She and her Delta reported into the Corporation base very close to their deadline the previous night. After a short discussion of Verse's false claim, probably another crude attempt at manipulation of the Dance through his assigned Alpha, they had served his "advertising" task adequately near one of St. Martial's many casinos and then tackled a side project. One of the targets prompted a very nerve-wracking conversation between them, physically exhausting for the Dance and emotionally wringing for them both.

_Watching, listening, as he tries so hard to give me the map of inside his head ... hurts. Heartbreaking. But anything that might help us get each other out, alive and with enough of our minds still intact, is worth it!_

She coaxed him off to a secure corner where she could guard a nap, so the Dance would not seem wounded by the time they checked in. Fehral admitted to herself that she cut the timing much shorter than she ought. _Stupid Verse!_ If the damnable redhead had been lying in wait, there would not have been time left before lockdown for her to try anything; as it turned out, Brigid's Verse made no appearance at all.

Fehral hoped the woman stayed away from all the rest of the Deltas for a few more days. Everyone could use a break. Dance never mentioned a gift, or new exercise equipment, or any overture more complex than Verse trying to join his meals: Verse probably had second thoughts about Fehral's advice. _And didn't bother tell me so! I can't teach that idiot woman how to get along with the rest of the Hybrids if she won't test an example!_

Five fifteen, the ornate clock in the plaza claimed, and still no Killing Dance. Fehral tapped the communication radio headset hidden in the hair below her left ear, worried. An automatic click told her that it had power, at least, and an open channel.

The plaza proved mostly empty. Fehral guessed the cause of this vacancy to be the trio of Marcone crime bosses gathered near the northeastern edge.

One wore a white suit!

Two pointed weapons at a terrified flunky, a flabby college boy in the Marcone crime uniform of hat and tie, hands chained behind him.

Chortling mentally, Fehral slunk into position behind the white-suited mafioso. Bullies were not at all like the helpless prey on the street: bullies chose to frighten and hurt.

Bullies fought back when violence erupted among them, convinced of their power, assured of their victory.

Bullies died very, very spectacularly when torn apart just so.

Spirals of blood soaked the three tattered suits as Fehral straightened her back, breathing heavily. She stepped delicately over the pile of bodies, careful to keep the frantic young man's attention centered on her dripping claws. Very dramatically, very deliberately, she reached around him to slice through the cuff on his nearer wrist. "You work for wrong master," she growled. "You go find nice work, quiet, no _gun_. Clean hotel, maybe."

He did not argue. He also did not stay to offer payment for her service, or to ask who made her. Fehral hid a snort of amusement.

_Can't blame an Alpha for not having her Delta around to do the talking. Speaking of whom,_ her thought trailed off, and she scanned the surrounding rooftops in vain for any hint of a charcoal-black figure.

When she looked back at the plaza, she easily spotted the approach of a figure she knew ... not the one she wanted. The rope-binder, Kinba Kushi, waded quietly through the evening's first faint bright spot under a street light. He was a thin, medium-sized, unassuming man even in his blue-and-grey armor and helmet, but no one questioned his place as the most privileged, most respectfully regarded Delta Hybrid at the facility. Even some employees deferred to him - perhaps including the one accompanying him. _White lab coat,_ a corner of Fehral's mind noted disquietly: _scientist or technician. Don't recognize the body movements, though._

If Kinba Kushi were here, openly and obviously walking at a sedate pace toward her, then Fehral knew he must have come to collect her. A minor concern would have some voice on her communications radio bidding her _return_, not the idiot fire-maker but her own Delta or any other among the series modified to put the right pitch and timbre into the key words.

She was in trouble for something.

Since they did not send the Killing Dance to fetch his Alpha back, she was in more than a few hours' worth of trouble, whatever it was.

_Surprised it took so long!_ her internal critique pointed out. _I thought I was going to have to stage something this weekend so the Observers would not start investigating me for hidden activities. I've never gone six weeks without at least a brief attitude adjustment. Don't want them looking at Dance too close!_

Nervous, Fehral ran through a mental list of her pockets' inventory: but she had not visited anyplace where she kept the detritus of her secrets, and she had not brought along forbidden tools. Nothing should point where she had to keep the Corporation from looking.

Kinba Kushi kept his hands relaxed at his sides, his torso straight, his pace measured. Halfway across the plaza still, he was showing Fehral that he was not angry, he had no plans to start the torture early, he meant to be as pleasant as he could in his work. In trade, Fehral put the curve of her hunched spine flat against the pawn shop's brick wall. She probably did not look welcoming or friendly - she could feel strain around her wide eyes, the quick flutter of her drooped whiskers at every shallow breath - but she knew she would be clearly visible, knew he would understand that she was complying.

This part, at least, was going to go all right.

The two men approached to within twenty feet. She even saw the glow of Kinba Kushi's eyes dim, a certain indicator that he genuinely was relaxing rather than trying to lull his target with an act.

"Fehral," Kinba Kushi greeted her gently.

The scientist chimed in, his voice pitched to carry as best an unaltered human could manage. "Fehral, _chains_."

Sure enough, he already had a loose grip on the five-point restraint system of chains and manacles, sized to keep her movements tiny and painful.

Not that Fehral had much time, this time around, to study it: the instant she heard the dreaded command, her body sprang into motion. Every memory of being suspended from her first trainer's favorite toys howled along in her wake as she fled, terrified, for the alley.

Kinba Kushi turned briefly to his scientist. "You idiot," he snarled, "you don't _say_ that while they still have room to bolt!" An instant later, Fehral heard his accelerating footsteps as he gave chase.

They had been hunting in the neighborhood of St. Martial called "the Flop" for weeks, Fehral and her Dance. She did not yet know all its secrets, but she knew the regularly hazardous gathering points for the local street gangs and she knew stealthy paths by which a very short, fast-moving creature could slip directly through them. Fehral raced through a loafing crowd of Freakshow, wove her way between feet among an impromptu Arachnos-versus-Marcone brawl, skimmed low to the ground as she passed inches away from the heels of an Arachnos surveillance trio. The electric crackle of adrenaline-spiking Freakshow encountering her pursuers carried forward at the edges of her hearing range. She scurried around the corner of the next building, a nice financial headquarters for some firm, and swung herself up onto the drainpipe just past the dumpster.

Maybe on the first setback ledge, she could stop. Look for the danger. Look for a place to hide. Let her heart slow, the horrific miasma pass her by. Maybe she could start to think again, not just run-

Sparks exploded all around Fehral as soon as she crawled onto the hard granite of the ledge. She had one clear view of a statuesque redhead, draped in brilliant red light, before flames higher than Fehral's ears washed out the entire world.

The only safe thing to do was to huddle in a tight ball on the dirt-streaked floor, try to breathe as shallowly as pain would allow, and pray that Brigid's Verse ran out of stamina before the circle ran out of oxygen. Unfortunately, when Fehral dropped to her knees, the circle contracted until she had no room to curl forward.

A pristinely oval fissure appeared in the flame, about half again the size of Fehral's paw, as if a tunnel had been shoved through from outside. Verse projected her tirade down through it.

"You _set me up_, you little hellcat, how dare you lay a trap for **me**? I reported your sabotage, oh yes. I would have handled this privately, but you ran to hide behind _him_, you **defied me** and went to his protection, flaunting your handiwork, and now it has come back to you!"

If she'd had the breath to speak, Fehral would have gladly shouted back that she had no idea what the crazy Delta was talking about. It had to be something about that squabble yesterday, when Verse claimed to have loan of an assigned Alpha instead of picking out any handful among those not associated to a particular combination.

Ever the dramatist, Brigid's Verse raised one hand so that Fehral might see it through the window. Like a master villain in a fantasy movie, Verse clenched that hand slowly into a tight fist; mirroring her gesture, the walls of the fire ring contracted still tighter around its contents. Fehral scrambled up to the balls of her feet, the closest she could approach to standing flatfooted since she became an Infinity, Inc subject. She bore two physical remnants of her once-human existence, her nearly-five-foot basic skeletal structure - even that held many localized modifications - and the superfluous straggly black hair which still cascaded down past her waist. As she felt her dragging tail start to burn and her balance begin to sway, a flitting thought passed that Verse meant to steal both of those last human relics away: hair scorched quickly, bones would warp in the blistering light, and neither would grow back the way they had been.

She could not prevent the agonized whimpers that escaped her, but damned if she was going to draw enough boiling air into her lungs to scream.

A red-gauntleted arm shot past the sliver-sized fragment of vision Fehral still allowed herself. It covered her muzzle, cupping just enough to keep a teaspoon of air. Unseen, another gloved hand settled hard against her ribs. She felt herself yanked through the fire wall as if thrown during combat.

Blessedly cool stonework propped her up. The hand at her muzzle lifted away, bracing instead at her collarbone while someone smothered the burning patches of her hair, her shirt, the fur on her legs and tail and lower arms.

"This," Kinba Kushi angrily chastened someone on his left, "is _exactly_ why I don't include you on recoveries. You stand there, you keep silent, you dismiss _all_ of your fire, and you **do not move** from that spot until I tell you otherwise!"

Desperately thirsty, Fehral thought about begging for some water. She peered up through her tousled hair at Kinba Kushi's chin, or at least that part of his helmet. The tag-along scientist stood behind him, a little wide-eyed, also gazing toward Fehral's right in a disapproving way.

_I'm being retrieved for punishment. I ran. Probably nothing I can do will go over too well right now._ Right on the heels of that came another thought: _Where the _hell_ is my Delta? He has to be looking for me by now! He won't save me, he couldn't if he tried, but he can get them to tell me _why_, he would give me something to ease my throat and make sure I only get the suffering I've earned, he can explain that I didn't mean to run so I wasn't really escaping, and he would make all of it something tolerable, something I can withstand!_

Kinba Kushi pulled Fehral away from the wall. He turned her in a quick circle so he could check for leftover cinders, then hustled her a symbolic few steps further away from Brigid's Verse. When the bulge of a window blocked Verse from her view, Kinba Kushi set Fehral down again so that her shoulder blades, part of her spine, and the top curve of her tail pressed securely against the hard wall. His voice was just right for handling a dread-filled animal, soft and reassuring and firm: "You have to do this. You know fighting only makes it take longer. You know I won't hurt you if you don't make me."

Fine, fine, if she could just...

Kinba Kushi's left hand wrapped around her right forearm just above the elbow, slowly forcing that arm up and out, tight against the wall. Fehral did not need to hear the clink of chains approaching to start fighting, fangs bared in a wild hiss. Kinba Kushi stepped inward at an angle, his right knee hard against the wall between her thighs so that she had no room to kick. Leaning forward slightly, he braced his other arm across her chest, pinning her in place, and hunched that shoulder against the scrape of her left claws.

Fehral looked around at the shadows desperately, ignoring the tiny recording drone keyed to follow the scientist. She was not strong enough to yank herself away from Kinba Kushi, and she could never dig her way through his armor fast enough in this position. The employee stepped up to attach that first manacle around her right wrist, Fehral felt her claws spasm frenziedly as if the shock-capable metal already pinched at her tendons. She sucked as much air as she could get into her lungs, powering one hysterical wail:

**"Daaaaance!"**

The Corporation employee must have learned to follow Kinba Kushi's lead, because he paused in mid-motion to glance down at her wild eyes, and address her firmly but calmly. "No, Fehral. The Killing Dance will not be available to you until after your punishment is complete."

Fehral stared up at him, stupefied, while the manacle clicked shut around her wrist. She wrenched her gaze over to Kinba Kushi in disbelief; nodding very slightly, he confirmed it.

The resistance in her eyes, in her body, sputtered and winked out. She still struggled against the restraints themselves as they were fastened into place, but Fehral sagged between Kinba Kushi and the wall, moaning, only yanking against the manacles in jerks until she took enough automatic electroshocks to lose all function in that muscle group.

In the background, Brigid's Verse watched irately. She had been excluded, _again_, from collaboration with another Delta's art; yet again, the leopard's doing. _It is enough,_ Opal consoled herself. _She will be corrected. The aberrant behavior is at a most vile end. It is enough to satisfy me._

One could not have the Master's golden boy made to suffer as well, she had deduced. The worst he would experience would be calling for his pet, and having it fail to come running straight away.

_It is enough to satisfy me._

If she told herself so often enough, it might even come true.


End file.
